The Fox Hole

Chapter 21: Roasted Zombies Don't Taste Good…

– Haru –

The door creaked open, and Shepard strolled back inside, this time wearing her full armor, looking every bit the badass commander she was. Weapons were strapped across her chest, ready for whatever hell was waiting outside. She wasn't alone. A massive shadow loomed behind her, and I knew immediately who it was before he even stepped in.

"Alright, I'm back, and I brought Wrex with me," Shepard declared.

Wrex's grin was as wide as ever as he stomped inside, the ruined wooden floor groaning under his weight. "If it isn't the best damn barkeep in the Citadel!" He looked at me with eyes that promised trouble. "Are you telling me I can get drunk whenever I want now?" The excitement in his voice was almost contagious.

"No," Shepard shut him down before he could get too excited. The Krogan actually pouted. The sight was weird and kind of funny. "We can only get drunk after missions," she added, and he smirked.

His eyes glinted as he looked around the room. "You asked me to bring my guns. So what type of mission is this?"

"There's an army of zombies surrounding my restaurant," I said flatly. We'd cracked the door open earlier and peeked out into Alice's dimension, and she wasn't kidding when she said there were thousands. I'd even seen a few giant ones strapped with machine guns and rocket launchers. The whole thing was ridiculous.

Wrex's grin widened, his eyes practically sparkling with bloodlust. "Signing up with you was the best decision of my long life," he laughed, glancing at Shepard. Then he noticed the others standing around the room.

"Skeletor! Good to see you again!" Wrex boomed at Ainz.

"Is everyone going to call me that now?" Ainz let out a deep sigh, or at least what would have been a sigh if he had lungs. Instead, he facepalmed—or skullpalmed, which sounded more appropriate, considering he didn't actually have a face.

Wrex's attention shifted, and he eyed Frieren, Fern, and Alice. "I don't believe I've met you three ladies," he said with a grin that might have been charming if you were into that kind of thing.

Alice just stared at Wrex in shock for a couple seconds. "What the hell are you supposed to be?" she finally managed to say.

"He's an alien," I said, the word coming out as blandly as I could manage. 

Alice blinked a few times, then let out a shaky laugh. "Am I dead? Is this some kind of hell? Elves, talking skeletons, aliens, and furries. What is wrong with this place?"

"Furries!? Hahahaha!" Ainz threw his head back and started cackling. He laughed for a few seconds before a weird green light surrounded his body, and he seemed to force himself to calm down. "Ah, I always hate when that happens. But still…furries. Hehehe…"

"Please don't call me a furry…" I said, practically begging Alice. I refused to allow that nickname to become a thing!

"What's a furry?" Frieren asked, tilting her head with genuine curiosity.

"Knowing all the perverts in here," Fern was quick to jump in. "It's probably something gross and sexual," she said, crossing her arms.

I hated that she wasn't wrong… 

I decided not to explain it, not wanting to tarnish Frieren's innocence, even though she was over a thousand years old—or maybe even older. She still gave off that vibe of naive innocence to me.

Alice's eyes darted around the room, wide and full of disbelief. "What are you all doing!?" she shouted, her voice wavering between panic and confusion.

I flashed her a grin,. "Isn't it obvious? We're about to go out there and wipe out that zombie army that's been chasing you."

Her jaw dropped. "But there's thousands of them!" she exclaimed, as if I hadn't seen them with my own eyes.

Wrex laughed. "I know, right? This is gonna be fucking awesome." He was practically bouncing on his alien toes.

Shepard stepped up and handed Alice a spare assault rifle she had brought. That was nice of her. "I noticed you only had those pistols, and it looks like you're almost out of ammo," she said.

Alice took the rifle like it was made of fragile glass, her mouth hanging open. "Um… do you have any extra mags? What happens when I need to reload?" she asked, her voice barely more than a squeak.

Wrex barked out another laugh. "Reload? Hah! You're funny, human!" He didn't elaborate further.

With that settled, we all started moving towards the door. Frieren and Fern were trailing behind, their eyes darting curiously between the weapons and the door. They came from a world where swords and magic were the height of warfare, so I took a second to explain what they were to her.

Frieren nodded. "Interesting," she said slowly. "A piece of lead launched at the speed of sound does sound lethal, but also easy to ward against." Without waiting for more explanation, she cast a quick spell, a shimmer of blue light surrounding herself and Fern. "This will repel any high-speed metal aimed at us," she added matter-of-factly.

I couldn't help but feel a bead of sweat trickle down my temple. She learned about guns a minute ago and already made them useless against herself and Fern. That was a thousand years of magical training for you…

– Albert Wesker –

Albert Wesker's red eyes glowed menacingly underneath his dark glasses. He leaned back in his chair as he watched the main screen with anticipation.

"My algorithms suggest there is nowhere left for Project Alice to run. She is 30 miles from the nearest city, no working vehicle, her psychic abilities have been pushed to their limits, and she should be almost out of ammunition," the Red Queen said. Her voice, a mechanical monotone, held the faintest edge of satisfaction. She had been tracking Alice relentlessly, and now they finally had her.

"It looks like Alice's luck has finally run out," Wesker said. He chuckled. On the screen, Alice's boots kicked up clouds of dust as she sprinted across the endless expanse of desert. Behind her, an army of over ten thousand undead stumbled forward, their decayed bodies moving in a grotesque wave. At the forefront were twenty of Umbrella Corporation's greatest titans—massive, armored, armed with weaponry that could flatten a city block. Each one was a fortress on legs, practically indestructible.

Wesker leaned forward, eyes narrowing as he soaked in the scene. The satisfaction in watching Alice, the thorn in his side for so long, finally brought to the edge of defeat made him almost giddy. Then, something unexpected happened.

"What is that?" The Red Queen's voice held an unusual note of surprise. Wesker's grin faltered. He had never heard the AI sound startled.

His own eyes widened as he spotted a structure appearing on the screen, right in the middle of the desert. It shimmered, half-hidden by the heat waves rising from the sand, but there was no mistaking it. It was a building. One that hadn't been there moments ago. It literally appeared out of nowhere! "Is that some kind of cloaking tech?" Wesker demanded. 

The Red Queen's holographic form flickered to life beside him, her childlike features unsettlingly blank. She shook her head. "That's impossible. Even we have not reached that level of theorized advancements in scientific invisibility research."

Wesker's jaw clenched. He glanced back at the screen, where Alice had come to a stop. She was staring at the building, her chest rising and falling with heavy breaths. She looked as confused as he felt, but she wasn't one to waste time. Within seconds, she broke into a sprint and disappeared inside without a second's hesitation.

"Command the titans to stop the army of undead," Wesker snapped. The tension in the room thickened. He needed to know what this was, and he needed Alice alive—at least for now.

"It is done," the Red Queen said. On the screen, the sea of undead shuddered to a halt, the groans of the horde fading into silence. The titans adjusted their stances, forming a perimeter around the building. The air was thick with anticipation. There was no way out for Alice. The undead began to shuffle, encircling the structure like a grotesque, rotting wall.

"The sensors on our satellites indicate there are no secret elevators or tunnels underneath the building. Subject Alice is trapped," the Red Queen said.

Wesker allowed a short, humorless laugh. "Unless that building can teleport," he muttered.

"Teleportation is impossible. The science required cannot be calculated, even for one such as I," the Red Queen replied. There was a hint of smugness in her voice, one that made Wesker's fingers twitch. He'd noticed the AI's tone becoming more self-assured lately, almost arrogant. It was unsettling, and he knew he'd have to deal with it soon. He wasn't about to let some overly clever AI start thinking it was anything more than a tool. He'd built Umbrella Corporation to rule. The world didn't need a self-aware Loli AI dreaming up ideas of its own.

Wesker tapped his gloved fingers against the arm of his chair. His patience was running thin. After a couple of minutes with no movement, he started to consider ordering his undead army to storm the place. Maybe Alice finally realized she had nowhere left to run. Perhaps she'd come out swinging, making a pathetic last stand against him, or, knowing her, maybe she'd pull some insane new psychic trick right out of her ass.

But Project Alice wasn't the first to step outside. No… it wasn't even a person at all.

Wesker leaned forward in his chair, his eyes narrowing. "Is that an actual skeleton?" he muttered to himself. No flesh, no muscle—just bone, fully animated and walking like it had every right to exist in the real world. It was big, too, wrapped in elaborate purple robes that made it look like some ancient mage from an old cartoon. And it wasn't alone.

More figures emerged from the front door, each one more bizarre than the last. Wesker's mind tried to make sense of it, but it was impossible. "An elf? A nine-tailed fox?" His fingers curled tightly against his armrest. "And what the hell is that… that ugly brown toad monster?" Each creature seemed even more ridiculous than the last.

What the hell kind of restaurant was this?

Wesker barely had time to process when the skeleton took a step forward. A shimmering magic circle appeared in mid-air in front of it. Wesker stared, feeling an uncomfortable twist in his gut. He was a man of science, a firm believer in evolution and progress. The T-virus was supposed to be humanity's next step, the pinnacle of evolution. Magic didn't exist, it was just fairy tale nonsense… or was it?

As he watched, the skeleton unleashed a wave of black fire that roared forward, swallowing his undead hordes. Hundreds—no, thousands—of the undead army were incinerated in an instant. Just gone, reduced to ash.

Then the elf stepped up, casting her own spells, sending destructive energy blasts that tore through his creatures like paper. And before he could blink, the fox transformed, morphing into a massive, thirty-foot-tall golden beast. Its mouth opened, and it breathed blue fire over the undead, erasing even more of them in seconds.

The Red Queen's voice chimed in, clinical and to the point. "I don't think we're going to be able to capture Project Alice."

Wesker's jaw clenched. Rage flared inside him. With a guttural growl, he brought his fist down on the Red Queen's holographic projector, smashing it into dust. "Dammit!"

– Haru –

Trampling over the undead in my massive nine-tailed form was always entertaining. There was something satisfying about feeling the ground tremble beneath my paws, especially when I was surrounded by friends taking part in the chaos. 

"Hahahahah! This is fucking awesome!" Wrex bellowed, his deep voice echoing as he charged through the horde, his gun spraying bullets and tearing through everything in his path. Shepard was right there next to him, eyes sharp, movements precise as she picked off zombies with quick bursts from her rifle. I glanced over to see Alice in action, too. She had taken a minute to adjust to the futuristic gun Shepard had handed her, but once she got the hang of it, she was a damn good shot.

Frieren was the real surprise, though. I knew she was powerful, but seeing her in action was another thing entirely. She moved with ease, her spells precise, obliterating waves of undead with a flick of her wrist. She might even have been as strong as Ainz, which was saying a lot.

Speaking of Ainz, the skeletal overlord looked almost insulted as he raised an arm, eyes—or rather, glowing red sockets—focused on the unresponsive horde. "These aren't magical zombies at all. Reality Slash!" His voice boomed, and a hundred more undead crumbled into pieces, disintegrated by his powerful spell.

A massive, hulking titan zombie stomped forward, wielding a giant chain sword that could have turned any of us into minced meat. The thing aimed right at Ainz, who didn't even flinch. He raised a bony arm and caught the blade mid-swing before casting, "Hellflame!" at point-blank range. The titan screamed as it was engulfed, turning to ash within seconds.

"What's the difference?" I asked, stomping over to where Ainz stood and smashing a titan wielding a rocket launcher into the cracked desert ground. The damn thing looked like it was trying to regenerate, but I doubted it could pull itself back together after being pancaked by me.

Ainz let out an audible sigh. "If these zombies were created with some kind of virus, we're going to have to quarantine after this to make sure we don't carry the pathogen back to our own worlds. I obviously can't catch it, but that doesn't mean it can't cling to my robes or something…"

I could admit I hadn't exactly thought that far ahead. I made a mental note to grill Alice about it once we finished wiping out the horde, but if Ainz knew anything, it was his undead. That meant he was probably right.

"It's not that big of a deal," Ainz said, waving off my concern. "I'll simply send a message to Lupusregina Beta. She's a level 70—er, I mean, a powerful cleric who can cure pretty much any disease, magical or not."

"That works for me!" I shouted back, unleashing another wave of blue foxfire. It tore through another line of zombies, lighting up the battlefield and leaving smoldering corpses in its wake. We were making progress, and the ground was finally clearing. But there were still more to crush, and I wasn't done yet!

– Alice –

The entire country had gone to hell. Technically, it was only half of the country at this point, but it didn't make things any better. From California to Missouri, everything had become an undead-infested wasteland. The east coast was rumored to be holding strong, with the army maintaining a fierce defensive line, but Alice wouldn't know. Rumor had it they weren't letting anyone through their barrier, infected or not. And Alice was definitely infected with the T-virus. It didn't turn her into a zombie like everyone else, for reasons she couldn't understand. She didn't know why she was different, and that bothered her almost as much as the infection itself.

All she knew was that she used to work for Umbrella Corp, and they were the reason the country, maybe the entire world, was in this mess. Millions were dead, possibly billions if the virus had spread globally. The guilt ate at her, simmering under the surface every time she heard the moan of the undead or saw the endless emptiness of once-bustling towns.

For months, Alice had been fighting Umbrella and their endless hordes of monsters. She wasn't always alone, she'd had allies, people who'd become like family in the middle of the nightmare. But a few weeks back, they got separated during a chaotic ambush. She hadn't seen them since. It made her feel hollow, but she didn't have time to dwell on that. Surviving came first.

Alice was pretty sure she was in Nevada when her motorcycle decided to give up on her. It was old, beat to hell, and she suspected it had been sabotaged when she stopped for a brief rest the night before. She'd barely had time to curse and kick at the thing when she heard them—groans and the shuffle of countless feet. An undead horde, drawn by some unseen force, moving toward her like they knew exactly where she was.

Of course, they did. Umbrella wanted her captured or dead, whatever was more convenient. It was almost flattering, in a sick, twisted way. Alice had spent too many sleepless nights wondering why they were so desperate to get her back. There had to be a reason she hadn't succumbed to the T-virus like everyone else. Maybe they knew. Maybe they wanted to dissect her to find out.

The thought sent a chill down her spine. She pushed it away and focused on the present. The desert heat was relentless, and sweat dripped down her face as she tightened her grip on the gun in her hand. She wasn't going down without a fight. Even if Nevada became her final stand, she would make sure it cost Umbrella more than they were willing to pay.

Finding The Fox Hole, a random restaurant standing alone in the middle of the desert, had been surprising. Finding it filled with beings she'd only ever heard about in myths and legends? That was shocking. But finding out these mythical beings were not only real but terrifyingly powerful, wiping out Umbrella's army of undead with ease—that was downright vindicating.

Alice couldn't help but laugh as she took down zombies alongside Wrex, the large alien who'd somehow become her newest battle buddy. He was roaring with excitement, mowing down every undead that crossed his path. She felt a surge of adrenaline, matching his energy as she fired shot after shot, barely pausing to catch her breath. The gun Shepard had handed her never seemed to run out of ammo, which was convenient as hell, although it did start to overheat every fifty shots or so. She'd gotten used to the rhythm of it—take fifty shots, cool it down, then get right back to it.

Alien weapons were incredible. She didn't know how she'd survived this long without them.

And speaking of aliens—how the hell did they exist, and why did nobody seem to know about it? Was it a government cover-up, or had everyone just been so busy with life before the apocalypse that no one cared? Alice had a million questions, and the one person who could probably answer them for her was off in the distance, tearing through the undead in his own way.

That one person, Haru, was currently transformed into a thirty-foot golden fox with nine tails, breathing out waves of blue fire that scorched everything it touched. He was an absolute force of nature, cutting a path through the horde as if they were nothing more than pests…

XXX

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